[~Craig~]

Hi, I hope somebody can advise me, I recently bought an HP Chromebox and installed Kodi (Standalone) onto it and it works great.
I am moving on from a Amazon FireTV box which had a built in optical connection, I need this as my surround sound output does not support HDMI.

So I bought the Turtle Beach Audio Advantage II USB sound card as per the wiki it works well being plug and play.
I can confirm it is working correctly as my receiver displays the correct codec during playback.

I am here to ask for some advice in regards to the sound options Kodi presents me with.
Under Audio output device I have the choice of the following:

Audio Advantage MicroII, Analog
Audio Advantage MicroII, S/PDIF

Is there anyone in particular I should use? Both seem to work fine

Further down I have the Passthrough output device set as: Audio Advantage MicroII, S/PDIF and then the appropriate codec's ticked.

I just want to make sure I have the right settings chosen and that the audio is being handled correctly and not putting any additional unnecessary strain on the system.

Thanks

[vineet381]

Hi,
My soundbar also supports surround sound only through optical SPDIF, can you please advise if I can use Turtle Beach Audio Advantage II USB sound card on my Nvidia shield which has HDMI only along with USB. If yes, what should be the connections to/from Nvidia shield, USB sound card, soundbar.

[Matt Devo]

since you're using an optical SPDIF connection, SPDIF is the correct option, but for 2-channel it doesn't matter obviously. All other settings can be left as default, though your concerns w/r/t additional strain on the system are unfounded - audio streams put such a low load on the system that it's essentially zero.

[~Craig~]

since you're using an optical SPDIF connection, SPDIF is the correct option, but for 2-channel it doesn't matter obviously. All other settings can be left as default, though your concerns w/r/t additional strain on the system are unfounded - audio streams put such a low load on the system that it's essentially zero.

Thanks for your help, Using the following setting:

Audio output device: Audio advantage MicroII, S/PDIF

Removes the option of setting the number of channels (ie 2.0) and presents different options such as sampling rate etc.

Is this what I should be using?

If I use Audio output device: Audio advantage MicroII, Analog, I get to set the number of channels etc.

[Matt Devo]

Thanks for your help, Using the following setting:

Audio output device: Audio advantage MicroII, S/PDIF

Removes the option of setting the number of channels (ie 2.0) and presents different options such as sampling rate etc.

Is this what I should be using?

If I use Audio output device: Audio advantage MicroII, Analog, I get to set the number of channels etc.

as I said, set it to SPDIF, leave everything else default. SPDIF is 2-channel only, which is why you can't change that option.

[Topken]

Matt SPDIF supports 5.1 via Doldy Digital and DTS. So yes it does suuport more then stereo audio and since this is in reference to KODI you should note that fact. AKA you can only get lossless stereo or compressed multichannel but no lossless mutli channel AKA no HD Audio but it can certainly handle 5.1

[Matt Devo]

Matt SPDIF supports 5.1 via Doldy Digital and DTS. So yes it does suuport more then stereo audio and since this is in reference to KODI you should note that fact. AKA you can only get lossless stereo or compressed multichannel but no lossless mutli channel AKA no HD Audio but it can certainly handle 5.1

right, but we're talking about the non-passthru section of the audio output settings. He already has passthru enabled and the correct multichannel bitstream options selected.